Herodotus (Swayne)/Chapter 1
THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS.
CHAPTER I.
CRŒSUS.
In the great quarrel between Europe and Asia, which is the end and scope of our author's work, it is of the utmost consequence to the satisfaction of his religious principles that the balance of blame should incline to the side of the true offenders. According to the showing of the Persians themselves, who had their story-tellers, if not historians, the Asiatics were the first offenders. A Phœnician skipper went to Argos, and carried off Io, the king's daughter, to Egypt, whither he was bound. By way of reprisals, the Greeks then carried off two women for one—Europa from Tyre, and Medea from Colchis. This may have partly excused Alexander or Paris, son of Priam king of Troy, for carrying off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, from Sparta, in the second generation afterwards. But then, said the Persians, the Greeks put themselves clearly in the wrong —for instead of carrying off another lady, they made the abduction of Helen a case of war. "To carry off women was manifestly the deed of unjust men, but to make so serious matter of their abduction was the part of simpletons, since they hardly could have been carried off without their own consent." Indeed, according to one account, Io at least eloped of her own free will. But in fact, our historian thinks, from the time of the Trojan war the Asiatics looked upon the Greeks as their natural enemies.
Without discussing too curiously all these tales, Herodotus has no doubt in his own mind that the blame ought to lie with the Asiatics, since Crœsus, king of Lydia, was the first historical aggressor. Before his time all the Greeks were free, and he was the first Asiatic potentate who, by fair means or foul, reduced Grecian states to various kinds of dependency. The towns on the coast he subdued by force, easily enough. He had proposed to try the same means with the islanders of the Archipelago, when he was dissuaded from his purpose by a shrewd jest. Among other travellers who visited his court was one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece—Bias of Priene. The king asked him, as he did all his visitors, what was the last news? "The islanders," said Bias, "are busy raising a force of cavalry with which they mean to invade Lydia." Crœsus declared it was the very thing he could wish,—but he hardly believed they could be so utterly foolish. Bias ventured to think that the Greek islanders would be equally amused to hear that the Lydians intended to attack them on their own element. The king took the hint: and it is the earliest specimen we have of the wisdom which afterwards so often clothed itself in the language of the "Court Fool."
The Lydians appear to have been a people, like the Egyptians, of nearly immemorial civilisation, and, like the Asiatic tribes who fought for the Trojans, to have had a common origin with the Greeks themselves, and to have differed little from them in manners and customs. There is manifest truth in the tradition which connected them with the Etruscans and the Pelasgians; and their three dynasties, of the second of which Hercules was said to be the founder, may have represented three cognate races of conquerors, like the Saxons, Danes, and Normans with us. They appear to have been at first a warlike people, but to have been enervated by conquest, and then, like the descendants of the ancient Italians, to have become chiefly famous as artists, especially as musicians.
This Crœsus, the son of Alyattes, in time extended his empire over most of the countries westward of the river Halys. He was, in some sort, the Solomon of his age; fabulously rich, magnificent in his expenditure, and of unbounded hospitality; so that great men came to visit him from all parts, and to gaze on the splendours of his court. Amongst them was Solon the Athenian. Solon had remodelled the laws of Athens, with the concurrence of the Athenian people; but, knowing the fickleness of his countrymen, had gone into voluntary exile for ten years, having bound them by oath that they would make no change in their institutions in his absence. Crœsus, in the course of his conversations with Solon, wished to extract from him the confession that he considered him the happiest of mankind. Solon refused to account any man happy till death had set its seal on his felicity, and took occasion to warn Crœsus of the instability of all human affairs, dilating especially on the jealous nature of the gods. The king could not brook the plain-speaking of his guest, and dismissed him in disfavour. He was soon to prove the truth of his warning: the terrible Nemesis, says our author, was awakened—probably, he thinks, by this very boast of thinking himself the happiest of mortals. Then he goes on to tell, in his own delightful fashion—
The Story of Adrastus.
Crœsus had two sons—the one grievously afflicted, for he was deaf and dumb, but the other by far the first of the youths of his age, by name Atys. Now Crœsus dreamed that he should lose this Atys by the stroke of an iron weapon. Through fear of this dream, he took him no longer with him to the wars, but sought out for him a wife who might keep him at home. Nay, he even had all the weapons that hung in the men's rooms stacked away in the inner chambers, lest any of them might fall on him by accident. While the marriage was preparing, there came to seek refuge at Sardis a Phrygian of royal birth who had committed homicide. Crœsus purified him with the due rites, and then inquired his name. He said, "I am Adrastus, son of Gordias; I slew my brother by misadventure, and my father has turned me out of doors, and I have lost all." And Crœsus answered, "Thou art the son of a friend, and art come to friends; with me thou shalt lack nothing. Thou wilt do best to bear thy mishap as lightly as thou mayest." About this time it came to pass that a huge wild boar came out of Mount Olympus in Mysia and laid waste the fields; and the people came to Crœsus and besought him to send to them his son to help them with the hunting-train. And Crœsus, mindful of the dream, refused to send his son, but promised to send the train and picked sportsmen of the Lydians. But his son Atys coming in, was much vexed, and said, "Thou bringest me to shame, my father, in the eyes of the citizens and of my bride, in that thou dost forbid me to go to the wars and the chase, as though I were a coward." But Crœsus said, "I hold thee no coward, yet I do wisely, for I was warned by a dream that an iron weapon should slay thee; therefore did I give thee a wife to keep thee at home. For thou art in truth my only son, for the other I count as though he were not, being deaf and dumb." Then answered the son, "It is natural, my father, to take good heed on my behalf, after such a dream. But what iron weapon hath a boar, or what hands to hurl it? If indeed thou hadst dreamed that I should die by a tusk, thou wouldst be wise in doing what thou doest, but not now, for this war is not with men." Crœsus confessed himself persuaded by these words, and allowed his son to join the chase; but he begged Adrastus to go with him and guard him, lest any evil should happen by the way; and Adrastus, though heavy of heart, deemed that he could deny Crœsus nothing in return for his kindness, and went accordingly. So the hunters made a great hunt, and having brought the boar to bay, stood round and threw javelins at him. And it came to pass that Adrastus threw his javelin, and missed the boar, and killed the son of Crœsus. So the dream was fulfilled. Now Crœsus, when he heard the news, was sorely troubled, and in his anguish, called on Jupiter as lord of purification, as lord of the hearth, as lord of companionship, to witness what he suffered at the hands of his suppliant, his guest, and the man whom he had sent to guard his son. And now came the Lydians hearing the corpse, and behind them followed the slayer, Adrastus. And he, standing before the bier and stretching forth his hands, besought Crœsus to take his life, as he was no longer worthy to live. Then Crœsus, though in great grief, pitied him and said, "Thou hast made full atonement, in that thou hast judged thyself worthy of death. Thou art not to blame, but as a tool in the hands of some god, who long since did signify to me what should come to pass." So Crœsus buried his son, and spared Adrastus. But when he was departed, Adrastus, as thinking himself of all men the most wretched, slew himself upon the tomb. And Crœsus mourned for his son for the space of two years. But at the end of that time he was fain to bestir himself, for there came to him a rumour that Cyrus the Persian had conquered the Medes, and was exalting himself above all the kings of the earth; and he hasted, if it were possible, to crush the Persian power before it became too strong.
Crœsus, in Herodotus' story, appears in close relations with the god Apollo. The world-famous shrine of this god was at Delphi on Mount Parnassus, currently believed to be the exact centre of the earth—the earth itself being looked upon as a round disc. In the temple there, the site of which was supposed to be the spot where the serpent Python was slain by the arrows of the Sun-god, there was an oracle, the most renowned in the world. Its answers, in spite of their ambiguity, guided the public and private affairs of the Greeks to an extent which appears to us now almost ludicrous. Though generally vague and perplexing, yet they were often so much to the point, that some of the old Fathers of the Church attributed them to Satanic influence, as they doubtless would table-turning and spirit-rapping, if they lived now. It was also believed that their efficacy ceased exactly with the coming of our Lord, by which time, at all events, faith in them had worn out. Milton alludes to this tradition in his "Hymn on the Nativity":—
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathèd spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."
Before he determined on his expedition against Cyrus, Crœsus sent to test the most famous oracles in Greece and that of Jupiter Ammon in Libya, in order that he might know which was most to be trusted. And he made the trial thus: he told his messengers to ask each oracle, on the hundredth day after their departure, what Crœsus was doing at that particular hour. The other answers are unrecorded, but the answer of the priestess of Apollo at Delphi ran thus:—
Deftly the dumb I read, I list to the voice of the silent.
Savour has reached my sense from afar of a strong-skinned tortoise
Simmering, mixed together with flesh of lamb, in a caldron;
Brazen the bed is beneath, and brazen the coverlet over."
Crœsus, when he received this answer, judged the god of Delphi to be the wisest, since he alone could tell exactly what he was doing—for he had been cooking the flesh of a tortoise, mixed with lamb's flesh, in a brass caldron with a brass lid. Accordingly he sent rich presents to the shrine of Apollo, and ordered all his subjects to pay him especial honours. Thus having satisfied himself that this oracle at least was true, he next sent to inquire if he should go to war with the Persians. The answer was, that if he did so "he would ruin a great empire;" at which answer Crœsus rejoiced greatly, for he expected to destroy the empire of the Persians. He sent a third time and inquired of the oracle if his reign would be long? And the oracle answered:—
Lydian, tender of foot, then along by the pebbles of Hermus
Flee, and delay not then, nor shame thee to quail as a coward."
Crœsus rejoiced still more when he heard this, for he thought that, as a mule could never reign over men, the rule of himself and his descendants would never come to an end.
His next step, still under the advice of the oracle, was to make friends of the most powerful Greek states. At this point Herodotus, having wound his readers up to the expectation of a catastrophe, like some modern novelists, diverges into one of his favourite episodes, and takes advantage of the fact that Crœsus found the leading Greek states to be the Lacedæmonans and Athenians, to relate a part of their history.
At Athens, Pisistratus, the son of Hippocrates, had now raised himself to absolute power. Athens being divided between the parties of the Plain and the Coast, he had headed the third, called the party of the Mountain, and by pretending that his enemies had wounded him, managed to be allowed a body-guard, and then seized on the citadel. He had some vicissitudes of fortune before he was firm in the saddle, and on one occasion returned to Athens in a chariot accompanied by a woman of great beauty and stature, who personated the goddess Athenè (Minerva).[1] The success of the imposition is possible, if we remember that the early Greeks believed that the gods sometimes came down visibly among mortals. By whatever devices, however, he gained or secured the sovereignty, he appears to have ruled well and righteously, and to have done much for the civilisation and glory of Athens.
The Spartans or Lacedæmonians were now beginning to assert the leadership which they afterwards obtained in the Peloponnese, as a consequence of those laws of Lycurgus, whose sole end and object was to make Sparta a model barrack for a state of soldiers.
With the Spartans Crœsus had no difficulty in concluding an alliance, as the path of friendship had been paved by a previous interchange of gifts and civilities; they had also heard of the Delphic prophecies. He immediately proceeded to commence a campaign against the Persians by marching into Cappadocia. A sensible Lydian made one last effort to dissuade him. "O king," said he, "thou art about to march against men who have trousers of leather, and all the rest of their dress of leather, and they feed not on what they would like but on what they have; for their land is rough. Nay more, they are unacquainted with wine, being water-drinkers, and they have no figs to eat, nor anything else that is good. If thou conquerest them, thou canst get nothing from them, for they have nothing to lose; if thou dost not, thou wilt lose all thine own good things. There will be no thrusting them back when once they have had a taste of what we enjoy; nay, I thank the gods that they do not put it into the mind of the Persians to march against the Lydians."
In undertaking this war, Crœsus was prompted partly by ambition, partly by his desire to punish Cyrus for dethroning Astyages, the king of Media, who was his brother-in-law. Crossing the river Halys,[2] the northern boundary, he advanced to the country near Sinope, on the Black Sea—in modern times notorious as the scene of the destruction of the Turkish fleet by the Russians. Here Cyrus marched out to meet him. A battle took place in which both sides claimed the victory. Crœsus, however, thinking his numbers too small for ultimate success, determined to fall back on Sardis, and begin the war again after the winter with larger forces. He sent round to his allies to tell them to join him in four months' time. But his long course of prosperity was drawing to its close. Cyrus had not been so crippled by the battle but that he could march straight to Sardis and so "bring the news of his own arrival." Crœsus, though surprised, led out the Lydians to meet him. They were at this time as good men of war as any in Asia. They fought, like the knights of chivalry, on horseback, with long lances; and the plain before Sardis was the battle-field of their predilection. But Cyrus invented a device to paralyse this cavalry. Taking advantage of a horse's natural fear of camels, he organised a camel brigade and placed it in his front, with infantry behind it, and his own cavalry in the rear. Though the Lydian knights, like the Austrians at Sempach, dismounted and fought on foot, the battle went against them, and Crœsus soon found himself besieged in his capital. Then he sent messengers to his allies urging them to help him with all speed.
The Spartans, even had they been able to reach Sardis in time, could not set out at once, as they happened just then to have their hands full. They were fighting with the men of Argos about a tract of borderland called Thyrea. Argos had been in the old Homeric times the head of the Peloponnesus, and was always very jealous of Spartan supremacy. The plausible plan had been adopted of fighting out this particular quarrel by three hundred chosen men on each side; though three on each side, as in the affair of the Horatii and Curiatii between Rome and Alba, might have answered the purpose quite as well. The combat proved as deadly as that between the rival Highland clans recorded by Scott in his 'Fair Maid of Perth.' Two only of the Argives were left, who ran home with the news of the victory; while a single Spartan, raising himself up from amongst a heap of dead, remained in possession of the field and set up a trophy. So the result was considered indecisive, and the main armies fell to fighting, and the Spartans conquered. Then the Argives shore their hair, which they formerly wore long, and bound themselves under a curse not to let it grow again till they had recovered Thyrea, and forbade their women to wear gold ornaments—a prohibition probably more difficult to enforce. The Spartans, in retaliation, made a contrary vow, to let their hair grow, having worn it cropped before. The survivor of their three hundred was said to have slain himself for shame.
In the mean time Crœsus was a lost man. The citadel of Sardis had been scaled by the Persians at a point where a king of old had omitted to carry round a lion, which was to operate as a charm to prevent its being taken. It has been mentioned that Crœsus had a son who was deaf and dumb. His father had tried in vain all means to cure him of his affliction, and given up the attempt in despair. But now, when Sardis was taken, a soldier approached Crœsus, not knowing who he was, to slay him; and Crœsus, in his deep grief, did not care to hinder him, which he might have done by giving his name, since Cyrus had issued express orders to his army that the king of Lydia was to be taken alive. Then suddenly the tongue of the youth was loosed, and when he saw the Persian approaching, he cried out—"Fellow, do not kill Crœsus!" and having made this beginning, he continued able to speak for the rest of his life. Thus Crœsus was taken prisoner, after a reign of fourteen years, and Cyrus, in the cruel spirit of the age, placed him on a pile of wood, with the intention of burning him alive. Then Crœsus bethought him of the wise words of Solon, how no man should be accounted happy until the end, and in his anguish called aloud thrice upon Solon's name. Cyrus asked the meaning of the cry, and when he heard the story, was so touched that he ordered the pile, which was already lighted, to be put out. But this could not be done by all their exertions until Crœsus prayed to Apollo for aid, when suddenly a great storm of rain came on and extinguished the fire.
Cyrus treated his royal prisoner with all honour. When the Persian soldiers began to plunder Sardis, Crœsus inquired of his conqueror what they were doing. "Spoiling thy goods, Crœsus." "Nay, not mine," replied the fallen monarch, "but thine, Cyrus." Then Cyrus stopped the sack of the city, and in gratitude for the suggestion of Crœsus, begged him to name any favour he could do him. "My lord," said he, "suffer me to send these chains to the god at Delphi, and to ask if this is how he requites his benefactors, and whether ingratitude is an attribute of Greek gods in general?" For Crœsus had loaded the shrine of Apollo with costly presents. The message was sent, and the priestess of the oracle made this reply: "Crœsus atones for his forefather Gyges, who slew Candaules his master. Apollo desired that the judgment should fall on the son of Croesus and not on himself, but the gods themselves cannot avert fate. The god did what he could, for he deferred the fall of Sardis three years beyond the destined time: secondly, he put out the fire, and prevented Crœsus being burnt alive: thirdly, he did not give a lying oracle, for he only said that Crœsus should destroy a great empire, without saying what empire it should be. Crœsus had no right to interpret his words according to his own wish. As to the oracle about the mule, he might have known that Cyrus was a Persian by his father's side and a Mede by his mother's, and so a hybrid king." Crœsus was obliged to acquiesce in the explanation, and to take his fate patiently. His ruin was, indeed, no common bankruptcy. "As rich as Crœsus" soon grew into a vernacular proverb. Yet he was by no means a bad specimen of the millionaire. His gentleness and good-nature were as proverbial as his wealth, and Pindar, the Theban poet, testifies to this point doubtless for substantial reasons of his own:—
The name doth never fade."
The strange vicissitudes of his life became a fertile subject for Greek romancers and moralists. His riches seem to have been derived partly from the grains of gold brought down in the sand of the river Pactolus, which made Asia Minor the California of antiquity. This was doubtless the origin of the fable of the Phrygian king Midas turning all that he touched to gold. It seems that Sardis in early times was an important place of trade, as Herodotus says that the Lydians were the first coiners of money and the first storekeepers, so far as was known. It was at the same time notorious as the great slave-market of the world.